Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Infrastructure as a service (IAAS) is a type of cloud computing that provides access to computing resources via a network. The computing resources are typically in a virtualized environment in which a company can access on demand multiple virtual machines. The virtual machines may run a variety of software, including open source software.
In one example, a private cloud computing software infrastructure is difficult to implement for a company. The free and open source software made available for this purpose is unwieldy, insecure in its default configuration, and can be laborious and error prone to operate and scale, especially in light of failures inherent to the distributed nature of cloud computing. These shortcomings are compounded when the cloud computing software is controlled by an appliance model. In the appliance model, the complexity and frailty of the underlying software system must be masked and mitigated in order to deliver the operational characteristics intrinsic to hardware appliances. Hardware appliances typically are more reliable and perform better than purely software alternatives. However, software still is subject to failures and the hardware appliance must make sure these failures do not affect the operation of the private cloud.